Beyond-the-check support going beyond grantmaking is a core practice within trust-based philanthropy. Yet the question of how to do it — creatively, strategically, and with care — often goes unanswered.

From 2019 to 2023, I was the founding director of a program called Partner Support at Luminate, an Omidyar Group foundation. Our team worked in collaboration with our funding and operational colleagues to focus explicitly on beyond-the-grant support for our grantee partners. Over the four years of the program, we reached 300 organizations across five continents, delivering 7,500 hours of support and 250 resilience stipends.

We learned a lot, saw meaningful shifts, and heard from grantee partners that these efforts were valuable. Specifically, research suggested that beyond-the-grant support mattered deeply to grantee partners: 84 percent of respondents said it was as or more valuable than the foundation’s financial support. However, this support remains unique in the philanthropic sector: 84 percent of our grantees received nonfinancial support, as compared with 58 percent of our peer funders’ grantees at the time of our Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) survey in 2023.

Why Go Beyond Grantmaking?

A thriving civil society necessitates cash as well as all the resources a funder is able to bring to bear. These resources may include networks, technical support, training, promotion and communications support, dedicated stipends, introductions, thought partnership, and especially careful listening and a partnership mentality.

Especially at this fraught moment in time when authoritarian leaders and funding cuts introduce existential threats to the nonprofit sector, partner support provides an additional and critical accompaniment to funding. According to the 2025 State of Nonprofits report by CEP, nearly 90 percent of civil society leaders report feelings of burnout at this moment, and a similar percentage report that burnout is affecting their staff.

Our aim, in our grantmaking and in designing the Partner Support program, was to shift from transactional relationships to transformational partnerships. The program focused on helping organizations and leaders achieve their goals of being more effective, building healthier and more inclusive teams, and strengthening their networks.

How To Approach Beyond-the-Grant Accompaniment?

We started with multi-year general operating support grants, recognizing that flexibility and longevity is important to sustain organizational health. We layered on beyond-the-grant support, because time, talent, networks, and skills can be as valuable as money. And we set forth principles such as: “We recognize and are alert to philanthropy’s inherent and unique dynamics around power.”

Read the full article about beyond-the-grant support by Laura Bacon at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.